


And the lost return to you

by Asariboyfriend (skyjacklegion), CookieFairy



Category: Fallout: New Vegas, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 18:32:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyjacklegion/pseuds/Asariboyfriend, https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieFairy/pseuds/CookieFairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Benny controlling the Strip with a not quite iron fist and war about to break out in Freeside, Arcade's searching for where it began and how Benny came to be in control in the first place; what he finds isn't what he expects, and if their Daemons have anything to say about it, nobody's going to expect what they find.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the lost return to you

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for the Fallout Big Bang, and I worked with the absolutely amazing cookiefairy whose art/fanmix can be found [here](http://cookiefairy.dreamwidth.org/5540.html). Overall it was an amazing experience and I'll totally jump on it again if I get the chance. 
> 
> seriously, check out cookiefairy's fanmix/art they're super talented oh my gosh?!

Goodsprings is quaint, for a shithole, and the Saloon’s just the same. Freeside seems so far away and so close with the neon signs, something in Arcade’s gut twisting with every step he takes towards the building. 

“Nice place.” Agnitio rubs her beak against Arcade’s ear, heedless of the dirt and sand. They’ve been walking for weeks, far too long for comfort; sand in places sand should never go, Arcade pushes his glasses up his face with a sigh, ducking his head on reflex as he steps onto the porch.

He would’ve called it a ghost town, if it wasn’t for the old man sleeping on the porch of the saloon. The water tower in the distance (Cemetery? Not the best place to bury their dead) and the rows of dilapidated buildings made the entire place look a little less homey and a little more abandoned. Wing smacking him in the back of the head, Arcade avoids the old dog Daemon with his nose on his paws, the soft rise and fall of its chest stuttering once, twice. Old man, old Daemon. Always a chance one of them would give out first.

Arcade tips an imaginary hat on his way past and is rewarded with a raspy chuckle as he swings open the door, trudging sand into the wood. The floor has worn away a little around the doorjamb, sand and grit worked into it until it starts to break apart, shiny and smooth. The inside is cleaner than he’d expected; expecting things is what gets you killed in the wastes. 

A girl and her dog Daemon lift their heads as he walks in, the door thudding shut behind him, Agnitio flapping her wings again, smacking him behind the ear. A bad habit, but one she’d never grown out of.

“This place is a shithole,” she mutters and Arcade stifles an amused snort. 

“Where isn’t?”  
There’s a coyote asleep on the bar when Arcade rounds the corner, startling him into taking a step around it. The animal’s tail is hanging down off the bar, swishing back and forth slowly as the man behind the counter cleans glass after glass with a cloth that looks suspiciously clean. The entire area’s too clean, like someone’s abraxo’d it multiple times and there’s a-

Red stain in the silver of the mirror behind the man, creeping up underneath the cracked glass. Huh. He can see himself in the mirror, blond hair dusty and glasses a little crooked, skin slightly tanned and white coat torn at the edges. Arcade’s not a small man, he looms and the bartender finally looks up when he clears his throat.

The first thing that gets his attention is the man’s admittedly impressive scar. It winds its way from the corner of his left eye right up past his ear into his hair, peppering the regrowth with grey in amongst the black. The rest of his hair is close cut, a little bit of a fringe splashed against dark skin, the tan a rich olive, the brown of his shirt nearly blending in. His left eye, grey and cloudy, offset by the green of his good one and although he isn’t tall the broad shoulders and thick stubble under a strong nose give him a solid, almost violent air. 

He doesn’t look happy to see him, either. The coyote huffs in her sleep, tail swishing dangerously close to Arcade’s hip, so the man moves a little to the left and clears his throat again. He opens his mouth but the shorter man beats him to it, scarred hands pushing the glass to the side. He smiles, he looks different when he smiles, slightly friendly and mostly tired. 

“What can I get you?”

The coyote opens her eyes, flashes them a mischievous canine smile and shifts, feathers first and then the rest of her and he’d- never heard of an adult who hadn’t settled, before. The man doesn’t seem to notice so Arcade doesn’t mention it, although Agnitio flaps her wings and stares and generally makes a scene. Talking around her is rather difficult so Arcade fishes her off his shoulder, puts her down on the bar and smoothes her feathers, cleaning them as he talks.

“Water, to start with. I’ll shrivel and die if I start with alcohol.”

A muffled laugh from the corner of the saloon and the woman sitting there tips her hat back, flashes him a sardonic smile and stretches out her legs. She’s pretty, if he’s looking at it objectively, wide eyes focused on them, hat pushed back against rose-gold hair. “It’s never a bad time to drink.”

Her brahmin raises both his heads to rumble his assent, horns rubbing at the side of the table. Trader, maybe. Or maybe she was just docile until provoked. He’d given up on trying to understand the correlation between Daemons and their people long ago, if there was one.

“If I don’t want to keep my arteries open, sure.” The thunk of a glass and the bartender’s fingers nearly brush Agnitio; the raven presses back against him, both away from those fingers and the curious Daemon shoving her newly minted beak against Agnitio’s rough, sand-chipped one. She needs a bath, needs a polish and needs for strange Daemons not to get in her face.

“No charge,” the darker man says, snagging his Daemon from the bar and tossing her to the other side of it. She shifts in mid air, flowing straight back into the Coyote and further, bigger, huge dog paws scrambling against the bartop before she falls off with a thunk.

“...So.” He holds the glass like a shield; the man is obviously insane. Nobody tosses their Daemon around like that. Scooping Agnitio up to his shoulder, he lets her mutter in his ear as he summons up a smile. This isn’t the strangest place he’d been over the last few weeks. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Everyone always is.” The bartender nods his head, looks up from under thick brows to assess him before he goes back to cleaning the glasses, stacking them up one by one. Probably for something to do with his hands. “Not many pass through here. Gangers got a bunch of us a year or so back.”

He says us, but it sounds like ‘them’ and Arcade narrows his eyes, tightening his hands around the glass. He’s not sure he’s overly fond of this town. “He’s very distinctive. Chequered suit, hair combed over, talks like someone’s about to tell him to shut up.”

“You a friend of his?” There’s something of a chill in the bartender’s voice, in the mismatched grey-green of his eyes. A tick, a twitch of his mouth and the hand that makes it from under the bar has a (loaded) shotgun held in it, thumb braced against the stock, finger on the trigger. 

Pants-wetting terror doesn’t begin to cover it but Arcade just swallows his water, lets the coyote dog whatever Daemon stalk around behind him, Agnitio pressed as close to his hair as she can get without burrowing into his skull. The stools are too damn short, his legs are tangled. He can’t run. 

“I see you’ve met him. His name’s Benny, if that’s any help.”

“Didn’t answer my question, doctor. You a friend of his or not?” The name confuses him for a second before he remembers the lab coat, another thing from his old life he couldn’t leave behind. The glass creaks under his fingers so he puts it down, a spiderweb crack leaking water down onto the scratched and scarred bartop. The liquid follows old furrows, catches the light and shines. Something pretty to look at if he’s about to die. 

“Not as such, no. I’m out to kill him, actually.”

The shotgun stays on the bar for a moment longer before the man smiles, nasty and broad and _mean._

“In that case, welcome to Goodsprings.”

\----

Leaving Goodsprings is easier than getting to it. Arcade’s glad to leave it behind; a literal ghost town, the graveyard under the tower too full for somewhere with such a low population. Agnitio’s happy to be in the sky again, floating overhead like a bird of prey but actually nowhere close. She’ll land when she wants to but she seems to find the bartender’s Daemon something of an irritant. Or maybe she’s just worried it’ll jump on her again. 

“You can’t possibly drink all of that before we get to Novac.” He’d been through Prim, seen what was left. A bunch of gangers and an old man they kept alive for their own amusement, his eyes dark and pleading and Arcade hasn’t been able to do anything for him, hasn’t been able to do anything for anyone. He wanted to give it a wide berth but they were close to passing by, smoke billowing from the back of the large casino, the remains of the tracks above it creaking in the afternoon sun. 

Cass tips her hat at him, laughing at the look on his face. It was a wonder her liver hadn’t crystallised long ago. 

“You underestimate me, doctor.” It seems he’s been doing a lot of that lately. Cassidy’s personable enough but the bartender still hasn’t told him his name and Cassidy, her huge brahmin Daemon lumbering along with her, isn’t any help on that front. She just smiles, like she has a secret she needs to keep and folded and unfolds the paper in her pocket like she doesn’t realise she’s doing it. 

They pass Prim, a smoking crater where the building on the right used to be. It hadn’t been that way a few days ago. Arcade swallows, closes his eyes for a moment and Agnitio wings down to him, talking in his ear the moment she lands. 

“There’s crosses in the space between the buildings.”

Oh. Swearing under his breath he runs a hand through his hair, fingers tangling with dirty blonde blocks and tugging, just for a second. An old habit he finds hard to break. It messes up his hair but he doesn’t much care out here, boots filled with sand.

“How old?”

“Days.” Agnitio’s voice is as ruffled as her feathers. “Most of them are dead.”

They won’t run into Legion, then. A small relief. 

“You know,” the bartender calles out, rubbing a hand over his face. He hasn’t shaved, looks for all the world like he’d started growing that beard weeks ago. “It’d be easier to go through Sloan.”

“Sure! I always wanted to make close personal friends with a Deathclaw.” Nobody knows what makes the monsters. Rumours said they were Daemons whose people had died, that they’d warped and twisted and were driven mad with grief. 

“Point.” Going the long way around will take a while but it’s no safer, something Arcade has discovered for himself. 

\---

They make camp a few hours after midnight, when they can’t see further than three feet anymore. An old building, mostly hollowed out to give them shelter and Cassidy settles in with her Daemon right against the hole in the wall. Not exactly safe, given that the huge Daemon might be something idiots shoot at first but she settled in with her bottles and when the fire started, pushed her boots off and warmed her toes. 

“That’s what I hate about the desert. Always cold at night.”

The bartender scrubs a hand over his face as he talks, stubble scraping against his palm. The coyote Daemon jumps around his legs before curling by the wall and settling in, seeming not to care the further away the man moves. It’s almost unnatural and as Agnitio starts to groom the hair over his ear, Arcade takes his glasses off and sits in front of the fire, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. 

“Everywhere’s a desert.” It makes the man laugh, the coyote raising her head and laughing along with him, the pitted and marked concrete behind them looking almost alive in the firelight. 

“Not everywhere.”

“Oh?” For all the people he’s met, Arcade’d never met anyone who hadn’t come from a desert or a wasteland and for a moment he can allow the thread of a strange sort of hope to take root. “And you’d know this how?”

He’s hit a sore sport. Cassidy looks up from her papers (where the hell did she pull those from?) and narrows her eyes, tipping her hat back to give Arcade a long, measured look as the bartender turns, back straight and jaw clenched. The scar at his temple looks awful and ragged and oh, well. Maybe questioning his ability to remember things or his knowledge is a fast way to make him clam up. Maybe.

“Lawrence?” Cassidy doesn’t so much sound inquisitive as resigned, the coyote shooting them all a filthy look before she stalked off and out of the building, leaving her person behind, standing there and staring at the wall. 

“Drop it,” Lawrence says, shoulders straight and head bowed.

“Consider it dropped.” Curse his need to have the last word; the bartender (Lawrence, he has a name for him now) turns his gaze to him, one dead eye looking straight through him. He says nothing else, and Arcade resigns himself to eating whatever the hell was in the can he had in his pack in silence. 

\---

The thing about making a bad impression is it’s really hard to recover from it. It isn’t so much the silence that gets to him as the complete and utter lack of any sort of conversation. Cassidy is fine, when she doesn’t feel like needling him for information and Arcade doesn’t like talking about himself, never has. Lawrence would’ve been a boring conversation partner but he doesn’t ask too many questions, so with Agnitio winging overhead and keeping an eye out, Arcade breaks their single file travelling habit to walk abreast the man in question. 

“I wanted to apologise.” 

That gets his attention quickly. Looking up at him, eyes narrowed, Lawrence shifts his hold on his pack, knife swinging against his hip. Distrustful, like he has every right to be, if the rumours he’s heard (from Cassidy, but still) about where he got the wound on his head turn out to be true. It makes what he said earlier look callous in retrospect, and perhaps it was, but there’s no way he could have known. 

“Did you, now.” Not a question. Past tense, but he’d started off with it so he guesses the suspicion is warranted. 

“Do want to apologise.” Trying for a smile, he’s sure he looks constipated or at least a little unwell but something in the shorter man’s shoulders relaxes, his feet dragging a little in the sand before he gets control of himself again. There’s latin for the situation but he feels like it’d be unwelcome, given the man’s reaction to the idea of memory. Or maybe just to the idea of being made to seem stupid. 

The coyote ambles back over and shoulder checks him, shocking the hell out of him and making Lawrence laugh.

“She does that.” Touching other Daemons, ones that aren’t your own is on par with strangling a child in some circles but this Daemon is open and smiling and honestly just laughing at him so Arcade just thanks whatever the fuck is listening that he didn’t touch her with his bare skin. 

“Sorry.” _For touching your Daemon, for indirectly calling you an idiot, for-_

“You’re fine,” he says, not elaborating and the tricky Daemon down by his legs flashes him a decidedly canine grin. 

“Your knees are hard.” She’s chatty, bouncy and honestly more terrifying than her person and Arcade’s not sure he wants to be talking to her. Sensing the anxiety, Agnitio winges down and alights on his shoulder, wings flapping around his ear, beating him on the back of the head. 

“I don’t think I can apologise for that.” The smile comes unbidden to his face when she flicks her tail at him, ears up at the way Agnitio’s looking her right in the face. Intense, but not entirely out of character. She keeps the feathered elbow of her wing pressed against the back of his head, a gentle reminder that she’s there to support him. 

“No worries, pretty man,” another canine grin and the coyote Daemon ambles off to go and bother Cassidy instead, leaving something unsettling in her wake. 

Lawrence just hefts his pack and keeps walking but Arcade could swear the backs of his ears are flushed. 

\---

It’s the third night of camping out. They have to take the day in shifts; too hot to walk at midday, they take dawn and dusk and most of the night, sleeping in shifts in whatever shade they can find. More often than not it’s the outcroppings of rock all along the canyon, their packs wedged under their heads as they settle in the holes they dig for themselves to get to the cooler sand.

The thing is, Arcade can’t sleep. They’re so close and yet so far away from what he wants, from where they need to be so he stares at the rock overhead and wriggles into the hole Lawrence’s Daemon helped him dig, Agnitio flush against his chest. Her feathers tickle his throat, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell her to move. 

“You know,” the Daemon says, shifting shapes as she ambles over (a yao guai this time, to block out the sun) “I think you’re nicer than you say.”

“I think you’re terrifying, so we’ve both got secrets.” He smiles but he doesn’t lie. Daemons can tell when you lie, even when they’re not your own. or so he’s heard. The grin the large Daemon shoots at him is positively feral as she inches closer, close enough to touch.

“Knock it off.” Lawrence bumps her shoulder with his foot, kicking at her from the other side as he makes his way past to get under the shade. Cassidy’s been drinking (when’s she not drinking) but she’s sitting under the outcropping, keeping herself hydrated with pulls of the water canteen. He’s been reminding her, but when he’s sleeping he’s sure she drinks more than she should. Losing a caravan is hard on anyone but she’s taking it harder than most. 

She’d left the trading post and lost her livelihood, so neither he nor Lawrence are hard on her. What she does is her own business. Lawrence makes a show of shoving sand out of the way, dousing his Daemon in something Arcade would’ve called play if he didn’t know the man. Lawrence was serious, always so serious with his eyebrows down and the corners of his mouth downturned. The scaps of the beard he hadn’t managed to get off with a knife blended into the stubble at his jaw, the dirt on his neck and the tear in the shoulder of his shirt as he pushes more sand out of the way and settles into the awkward hole he makes for himself. 

“Sleep, Arcade.” He doesn’t call him doc. Refuses, saying something about a man named Doc he didn’t want to forget but memory’s a fickle thing in the wastes. Time moves strangely, jumping back and forward and sideways so Arcade lets him do what he wants, gives him space and doesn’t pry.

“If only I could. I’ve spent more time looking at this rock than I should.” Raising an arm, he points lazily at the overhanging rock, the lines and twists in the stone almost hypnotic. 

“Go to sleep, Arcade.” The Daemon’s voice is right near his ear and Agnitio pushes her beak under his chin, so he closes his eyes and thinks ‘I’ll just pretend’ and wakes up to Cassidy shaking his shoulder for his turn at watch, his face mashed against the Daemon’s shoulder and Agnitio’s head pushed under his chin. 

He wants to apologise again, but neither the Daemon nor Lawrence stir when he stands so he decides to leave it for the time being.

\---

Novac’s a smoking hole in the ground. Crosses, stark against the setting sun, pepper the landscape like so many discarded toys and Arcade’s always wondered, in-between screaming and running for his life, how the Legionnaires find time to make them, with all the pillaging and burning. They’re still down there, milling around the crosses and tying people up to them and Lawrence sucks in a breath beside him, eyes narrowed as he looks down the scope of his rifle. 

“They’ll be there for a while.” With the Strip locked down and the NCR ousted, the Legion has a nearly free run of all the towns between; join, be enslaved or die are the only options and nobody in Freeside or the Followers is really that impressed with the ultimatum. Growing bolder the more time passes, the Legion spend their time amassing followers and spreading propaganda. 

The first head explodes while they’re watching and Lawrence’s fingers twitch on the trigger before he can stop himself. The safety clicks, his hands are sweating and Arcade swears, pulls the butt of the rifle down with a panicked grab. 

“What are you thinki-”

Another head explodes, blood splattering across a cross and the victim’s legs with a wet smack. They’re less organised now, more shouting and another head explodes before they turn to the stupid great dinosaur that blots out half the setting sun, the mouth wide open and the glint of a gun somewhere between the teeth flashes like a death knell.

Cassidy has her rifle up as well, her Daemon hunkered down as she and Lawrence settle in to pick Legionnaires off; a body doesn’t blast back when hit with a bullet, it just sort of crumples and Arcade can almost feel bad for their knees every time someone flops back with a bullet in their chest.

Their advantage doesn’t last long. Surprised for a good long moment the Legionnaires start to mobilize, half the remaining men running for that ridiculous hollow dinosaur and the other half coming for them, stumbling over rocks and between buildings, making shots more difficult. The sand’s in their favour right now but won’t be for long and Lawrence thrusts the gun into Arcade’s hands right as his Daemon thunders past, bigger and faster and more terrifying than she has any right to be. 

A giant coyote, mixed with something close to bear and Agnitio flaps overhead as he raises the rifle and aims down the sight. 

_BLAM_. One. _BLAM._ Two. _Click_ fuck, he needs to reload and every second it takes they’re moving closer. The first yelp makes him twitch, a Legionnaires wolf Daemon crushed between the massive coyote’s jaws. She fights like a mad thing, possessed of some blind rage and Lawrence is right in there with her and then past her, slashing and cutting and ducking out of the way. For all he’s blind in one eye he’s efficient and Cassidy makes up for the time it takes him to reload. A shout from the back makes them look up and a red and gold clad body flies out the mouth of the dinosaur, hitting every scratched green edge and bump on the way down, the man’s Daemon evaporating in mid air. 

Agnitio lets out a cry of warning and Arcade barely has a second to smash the barrel of the gun up into a man’s face; he clutches at his nose, staggering back and gets a bullet to the neck for his troubles, his Daemon leaping and being shouldered to the side by Cassidy’s massive, two headed brahmin.

And just as quickly as it starts its over. The last body falls from way too high up, a bloody hat following it, red and flapping in the breeze. The silhouette of the massive Daemon stands tall atop the ruined husk of a building, panting and dripping sand as Cassidy hefts her rifle to her shoulder, keeping the sight trained on the bodies of the men across the sand. 

Leaving their position cautiously, Arcade draws his own pistol, the hum of the batteries powering up almost comforting, Lawrence’s rifle slung over his back. He’d come back for his pack in a moment, and Cassidy was quite happy keeping her rifle trained on all of them, so he picks his way over rubble and sand until he reaches the coyote’s side. 

“Where’s-” He hears him before he sees him, Lawrence covered in sand and bleeding from a slash to his ribs, down to the fleshy part of his side. He flashes Arcade a feral grin, reminiscent of the coyote at his hip, blood seeping down and over his fingers to drip onto the mixed sand and asphalt crunching under his boots.

“That hurt.”

\---

The shooter in the dinosaur calls himself Boone. He picks his way down and over to them with the care and grace of a man used to moving by himself, injured though he is. Bruises, mostly, and when he comes abreast of them there’s something in the clench of his jaw, the way he looks between them all like they’re a combination of hope and something closer to despair than he’d want to name. The eyes of a man who lost far more than he should’ve and the bodies on the crosses have long stopped moving; the slashed throats and stray bullets took care of that little concern. Pity. Legionnaires cripple before they hang. There’s no life left in them.

“You’re headed where?” He’s stoic but, Arcade thinks with no small measure of amusement, he’s gotten used to that over the last few days. 

“The Strip,” Lawrence grits his teeth as he answers, Arcade slathering something foul smelling onto his side and he’s still covered in sand, dirty and sore. “Got a man to kill.”

Boone busies himself piling the bodies. He says he wants to burn them, but he also seems to take a little too much interest in pulling arms out of sockets. He doesn’t bother to cut the dead down from the crosses. 

“You’ll be killing Legion on the way.” It isn’t a question and Cassidy wrinkles her nose in distaste even as she checks her Daemon over for injuries. They’re all torn and bloody, Cassidy with the swipe down her cheek from a stray machete, Lawrence with the wound in his side, Arcade’s palms scraped and bloody, the coyote Daemon’s fur matted with what looks like blood and dust. 

Agnitio calls out a warning overhead as they lit the fire under the bodies and Lawrence shakes hands with the sniper, hard and fast. They’ve got to move. No time.

“Welcome aboard, Boone.”

\---

“My name’s Courier,” the coyote Daemon mumbles, her ears back and her tail low. Her person’s hurt, she’s upset about it but she’s still amiable, still comfortable around him and the others in a way that he knows Agnitio will never be. He envies her a little, wishes he could see the world the way she does, bright colours and sounds and something maybe a little broken. Maybe he didn’t want to see it that way at all. Lawrence is by himself again, watching them both so Courier ambles over, her fur sliding from short to longer, easier to handle, softer to grab. 

“You don’t talk much,” he says by way of greeting, and the stockier man snorts.

Sliding another old, ruined book onto the fire to set the wood to blazing (I’ve read it before calm down it’s fine), Lawrence closes his eyes and leans back, tracing the scar from his ear down to his eye and back again with a lazy swipe of his thumb. His side still hurts, bandages bloody and smeared with dirt but there’s not much they can do about that. They’re too far out for anything, anymore. If he lives, he lives. Courier tucks in against his side, her nose presses into his elbow so Arcade settles on his other side, injury notwithstanding, watching as Boone and Cassidy strike up awkward, stilted conversation. 

“Not gonna say anythin’ that’s not worth sayin.” 

“I can see that.”

They’re silent, for a moment. Cassidy says something that makes Boone’s lips twitch and Arcade rubs a hand through messy blonde hair, greasy from his fingers sliding through his fringe so often. He starts again, the words tumbling out before he can catch them back.

“This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing with my life.”

It sounds petulant. Whiny, almost too much so but Lawrence just laughs awkwardly, waves a hand at him and braces his arm on his knees, the ruined wall behind them creaking with effort. That’s one thing for the Mojave sky at night, this far from the strip; counting stars is easy so Arcade does that until Lawrence decides to speak, Agnitio bouncing around Arcade’s feet, leaping onto his knee for a nap. 

Courier lifts her head and huffs out a laugh, her ears back, tail caught between her paws. It’s still a shock sometimes when she speaks, but she and Lawrence have a...damaged relationship, if damaged is the word. The fight with the Legion has shown them that, the two of them fighting on different fronts, snarling and ripping and tearing half a mile apart. People don’’t go that far from their Daemons, they just don’t.

“What’d you think you’d be doin’, then?” She speaks like Lawrence when she wants, stilted and awkward for the most part. Not quite as reserved. 

“Before I came out here, I was trying to find a way to use natural compounds to make medicine.” Its a simplified version of what he was doing but he doesn’t want to go into specifics. He hurts too much for that.

“A doctor.” Sounding rather interested by that, Lawrence tilts his head to look at him, still braced back against the wall. They’ve moved out of the ruins of Novac for the night, but not too far. Kept the fire low and behind a wall, so nobody can see. Simple things that will keep them alive. 

“Something of the sort.” Falling silent again, Arcade watches the fire with Lawrence until he can’t anymore, his legs sore, his palms scraped. Every time he moves them it hurts so he pushes himself up to get to their packs, listening to Boone and Cassidy as he does so.

“My wife. She was-” Boone doesn’t need to finish the sentence and Cassidy doesn’t let him, spitting to the side and offering him some of her whiskey. Where she keeps it, he’ll never know. Boone’s talking quietly, cap down and glasses pushed up his face so Arcade doesn’t interrupt. He slides to sit down next to them, washing his hands with some of the water. Apparently there’s a working tap they can get to in the morning. Boone’s had to get water somehow. 

“Bastards.”

If Arcade closes his eyes he can feel Courier’s gaze at his back, can hear the soft rise and fall of Lawrence’s chest as he breathes in his sleep, so he doesn’t close his eyes for a while.

\---

It’s a long, roundabout road they have to take to get where they’re going. Boone’s sure the Legion are on their tail and Arcade’s not sure he’s wrong, given the unholy mess they’ve left behind. Lawrence seems less worried about it, moving easier than he was even a day before, and by the third day of walking and the third burned out town he’s barely limping. The NCR camps are just as hollow as most of the towns and the still populated ones they pass by (Boulder, Golf) are so heavily fortified it almost makes him laugh. A few lengths of steel and broken wire isn’t going to stop anyone determined enough to get in but if it makes them feel safer, all power to them. 

Boone scouts ahead, his Daemon sliding idly through the sand beside him. They’d thought he didn’t have one until this morning, the snake (he’d read about them, saw what they’d become in the nightstalkers) slithering up his pants leg to whisper in his ear, tail rattling against his elbow when she finally settled in against him. For all their strange secrecy about things, their Daemons were mostly in clear view, something large, something visible. Courier tries out the snake shape for a moment and says it feels strange to walk on her ribs, whatever that means. It makes sense, from an evolutionary point of view, but having a belly that exposed seems like a bad idea for a Daemon. Or for anyone in the wasteland, for that matter.

They find more Legionnaires on the fourth day. Their bruises and cuts are all but healed and Lawrence doesn’t bother stopping, just barrels straight ahead with barely a word to them all. Suicidal, maybe. Insane, definitely. 

If he’s honest, the Legionnaires hear them coming. Anyone would hear them coming but they don’t do much more than raise their machetes; guns are too much trouble for them, it seems. Maybe they just have that many troops to throw away; Lawrence doesn’t much seem to care and Boone has his rifle out, a frightening look on his face. It’s all Arcade can do to keep up, Agnitio flapping up from her place on his shoulder to get into the air. She calls out positions, tells them of men hiding in the sands and Boone’s on them like a sandstorm, rifle repeating again and again and again as the bodies fall into the sands. 

Lawrence is a close quarters fighter and with the Legion, that’s a bad idea. Still, he comes out of it with a few scrapes and a prisoner, Courier with her massive paw firmly on the Daemon’s throat, the Legionnaire rolling in the sand in an effort to breathe. 

“Enough!” He’s shouting, screaming and Courier presses further down, nearly snaps the Daemon’s neck. There’s a creaking, groaning sound and the fox hood falls back from the Legionnaire’s face, his glasses come off next as he struggles to clear his airway, struggles to suck in a breath. 

“Enough.” Lawrence, all quiet command, pushing Courier back and away. The Daemon whines, panting as it crawls to the man writhing on the floor. There’s something in Lawrence’s eyes, the blind one staring sure at the body, his gaze hard and compassionate all at once. A strange expression for a stranger man.

“You will burn.” The Legionnaire is gasping, his wolf Daemon held close to his chest. They’re both panting, both covered in sand and blood and something else, something that shimmers and shines in the light. “The Legion will destroy you as it destroys everything. Owns everything.”

“You don’t own my wife.” Boone’s breath comes harsh, his rifle never wavering and the Legionnaire laughs, a hacking sound at the back of his throat. 

“We do. I know you, Boone.”

“You don’t have her. I took her from you.” His voice wavers, his rifle stays steady and the shot rings out, bouncing off the canyon and spreading around the sand. 

They look at the corpse for a moment, the fox hood thrown back, the Daemon turning to dust before their eyes, wolf body dissolving and sinking into the sand. 

“You have nothing,” Boone whispers, his hands still shaking. Lawrence takes the rifle from him, Cassidy has their backs and Arcade takes his arm, pulls him back into the world and makes him stay there, his Daemon wrapped around his neck and whispering words of love and adoration into his ear. 

 

\----

The strip looms large before them, the walls heavily fortified, the guards patrolling the outside, the flashing lights muted in the midday sun. Washing his hands of the matter would make all their lives easier but the breath Lawrence sucks in at the sight of the Strip, of the gates between him and the man who’d wronged him takes the fight out of Arcade completely. 

The ruined caravans before them speak more than anything else as to the conditions in the Strip. Gunned down before they got to the gates, it was a wonder Arcade got out at all to begin with, the brahmin (and remains of Daemons, their dust glittering in the sand) splayed next to the bullet-ridden bodies of the men and women who’d thought they would come to a refuge and instead came to their execution.

Cassidy holds her breath as they get closer, her teeth clenched, hand at her gun. “You notice how none of them have the colours of the Crimson Caravan Company.” Her free hand to her pack, she pulls out the papers and looks down at them, hat tipped down across her nose, freckles splayed stark where they’re exposed to the sun.

“This entire thing is bullshit.” Voice tight with something close to rage, Lawrence looks from the bodies to the wall and back again. “How the fuck’re we supposed to get in?”

“Ah, I can take care of that.” The shortwave radio he’d shoved into his pack was heavy and unwieldy, no matter it’d been sized down for the trip. The hours of having the edges smack against his kidneys seemed worth it at the look on their faces, the faint hope in the grim, worn edges of their mouths. “I’ll have to wait till dark to use it, but the batteries from my gun should work.” Not as much emphasis on the should as there likely had to be, but he isn’t going to tell them that. 

It’s nice, being the one with the knowledge again, the one with the upper hand. He hates going in blind (suspected that has something to do with Agnitio’s shape, the way she wings overhead and gives him updates on what is coming) and despises being the last to know vital information. Knowledge is power and the Followers know that, know the risks of too much knowledge as well as too little. 

And he’s given the three of them scarce little to go on. He feels, deep down in his bones, that he needs to tell them more. Talk about how Benny hadn’t been that bad before power went to his head, about how he rules the strip with robots rather than charm, how he hides away in the tower that used to house what they now know to be a dead man. He’d thrown the body from the roof to rot in the sun, wizened and twisted. 

Instead Arcade sits with them a little off to the side, gets something to eat and lets Agnitio wing overhead. There’s not much chance they’ll come out of it alive, he might as well let everyone have a break when they can. They’ve got a few hours grace and days to recover from, the trip having taken its toll on them all. They’re weary and broken and twisted into knots, not friends and not enemies but something else, a camaraderie that comes from spilling blood and never talking of it.

“He shot me in the head.” 

Lawrence doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t talk about himself but he’s doing it now, Arcade’s arm pressed against his, the simple shade they’d managed to find barely big enough for the both of them. Boone’s patrolling, or whatever the fuck it is he does and Cassidy’s picking her way around the leftover caravans, torturing herself with it. They can’t make her stop and Arcade finds he doesn’t even want to try. He likes them well enough but they’re all wrapped up in their own problems, their own obsessions. It’s not like he can really talk, the secrets he keeps. The memory of metal and smiles and the stinging ozone as the guns fire again and again.

The Followers advocate peace, as much as they can. Advocate not repeating the same damn mistakes, the same idle egocentric fancies that started the war in the first place, and yet here he is, leading a group of people back to kill a selfish, self-obsessed shell of a man. Does that make him a hypocrite? Show the beginnings of a tyrant?

“And you survived?”

Lawrence laughs at that, the sound startled out of him. He looks shocked at himself, which just makes the corner of Arcade’s mouth twitch, glasses sliding down his nose as he gets out of the lab-coat and uses it to shield his legs and boots from the sun. 

“Mostly.” Courier’s doing her thing, chasing something around the in the dirt and Agnitio scoffs next to Arcade’s ear, messes with his glasses and tries to slide them off his face. She’s not often playful but when she is, it’s at the most inopportune times. He slides his glasses down his nose further, gives them to her to play with but that’s defeating the purpose, just serves to piss her off. He holds one side of the glasses instead, letting her tug on the other, trying to wrest them from his grip.

“You don’t look like a ghoul.” That’s not entirely fair; ghouls are alive, they just stay alive. It startles another laugh out of Lawrence, the scar looping towards his ear crinkling when he narrows his eyes, mouth turned upwards at the corners. It slams him in the chest that this strange, dark, awkward man is something close to a friend, if he can have that here. Someone he wants to get to know. 

“Feel like one, some days.” It has the air of a confession, Courier ambling back over to them and shaking out sand, her tail thudding against Arcade’s knee as she lounges between them, digging herself another hole in the sand. 

He can relate. Flashing the man a wry, self-deprecating smile, Arcade rubs a hand through his hair and moves the edge of his coat away from digging, questing paws. 

“As your doctor, I’d advise against that.”

“Noted.” He doesn’t laugh again but the smile stays on his face for near on an hour which, absurdly, Arcade counts as a victory.

\---

Julie and the Kings smuggle them in. Well, smuggle puts too fine a point on it. They haul them in by their ears and leave them stumbling as they slink past the patrol bots, Cassidy’s massive Daemon nearly causing problems half the time and Boone’s tendency to shoot first and ask questions later accounting for the rest of the mess. It’s not until they’re in the Fort that Arcade takes a breath, jacket dusty and boots a mess but the dirt feels more like home than any catwalk, any soft swish of a door ever did.

“We need to keep moving.” Julie looks exactly the same, overly spiked mohawk and all, bird Daemon flapping about her shoulders. Arcade doesn’t bother to glower at her. Lawrence is doing the job for him. The man’s still favouring his side but doesn’t stop, doesn’t even bother letting Courier get in people’s faces before he’s got his arms crossed, eyes narrowed under thick, dark brows. 

“I need a day to plan.”

Plan. There was never talk of any plan; Lawrence wasn’t expecting to come out of his alive, but they had no intel on Benny aside from what the Kings and the Garrett twins could find out. Arcade hates going in blind. Cassidy stands a little to the left of the man, her own arms crossed and Boone doesn’t bother moving, his snake Daemon coiled around his neck, tail rattling. 

Both glad he’s brought them and utterly despairing, Arcade gets between them all, hands held up, Agnitio perched on his shoulder. Is she bigger, or is it just his imagination? The weight of her is familiar and foreign all at once. 

“We can’t rush into things,” he starts, and the King opens his mouth from across the fort. It makes Arcade want to boot him firmly in the teeth. For all he’s charismatic and damned smart, the man has truly terrible timing. The man’s Daemon sits against his arm, a dog of some description but another one is at his other side, mechanical and heavy, broken in more ways than one. He’s smiling at them, panting happily, the bull insignia painted into his side faded and worn. He’s friendly, for the most part. Keeps to himself. Arcade wishes more people would follow his example.

“Rushing into things is what got us in this trouble in the first place,” the King says, frowning. Too many failed attempts and Lawrence’s head snaps up at that, Courier at his side, ears forward and interested. The mechanical dog at the King’s side, tail wagging and bumping into the King’s own dog Daemon, let out a truly awful, whirring bark. 

“Tell me everything.”

\---

Everything turns out to take a while. The sun’s right on its way up just before the King finishes explaining, detailing the loss of Silver Rush, the way the Strip had opened up, fire and bullets and who the hell knows what else decimating a two hundred foot break between Freeside and the Strip. The Brotherhood of Steel has tried, their weapons barely making a dent and with the Legion encroaching further and further and the NCR running away with their tail between their legs, they’ve been busy as hell and half as hot around the collar. Lawrence takes it all in, almost frighteningly intense and Arcade wonders if he’d been fooling himself all along, if this revenge isn’t going to consume the man and spit him out the other end mangled and broken instead of just changed. 

A soft hand at his wrist brings him back, the Brotherhood representative gentle, if not shy. 

“You should all eat before you try this. It’s easier to vomit if you’ve got something worth coming up.”

Speakikng from experience, and her scorpion Daemon clacks its claws at them, making him twitch. Her name’s Veronica, he discovers between mouthfuls, Lawrence refusing food to get in people’s faces, to find out information. He’s tenacious, draws Arcade’s attention in like a beacon and the look Veronica gives him is at once knowing and annoying. She’s soft looking, blonde hair and gentle eyes. The giant glove at her hip gives him pause. Anyone with the Brotherhood deserves some small measure of respect, if not outright terror. He thinks they’re all a little mad, but he’s not one to judge. Just look at what he’s planning. 

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.” A wry twist to his mouth has her rolling her eyes at him, her Daemon clattering over his boots. He’s not sure he subscribes to the whole idea of a person’s Daemon telling you something about them, but then again...

“See if you can get him to eat, too.” She’s looking at Lawrence like he’s something to be studied, like she doesn’t quite get how he works. To be honest, Arcade’s not sure Lawrence knows how he works, either. 

“You can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do.” He’s barely known him a week and he already knows that. It feels like longer. Feels like an age. 

He wishes it was longer, which is foolish and childish. 

Veronica doesn’t say anything else, just ambles over to Cassidy and Boone with the food, bread as fresh as you can get it in a hellhole made of sand. 

\---  
“You’re not expecting to survive.” It’s not a question, and Lawrence does him the courtesy of not pretending like it is. He goes back to cleaning his gun instead, his hands shaking a little with the effort it took to keep still, to remain focused on this one job. Boone and Cassidy are getting in place and Victoria is getting the rest of the Brotherhood to agree to another charge and for the moment it’s only them and their Daemons, Courier nudging Agnitio with her nose and getting a peck for her efforts. 

“No.” Touching the scar at his temple, Lawrence flashes him a weary sort of smile. “I’ve cheated death once. I don’t think I’ll get that lucky again.” He sounds so resigned it makes something in his stomach clench, his fingers catching on a snarl in his hair as he fell prey to his old habit, messing with the front of his blonde, slightly dirty hair. 

“You’re not even going to try?” He’d like to think he doesn’t sound worried or upset but he does, couldn’t keep it from his voice and when had this infuriating, irritating man become his friend? Lawrence isn’t the sort of man who softens, isn’t the kind of person who gives false hope but he does stop what he’s doing, puts the gun cleaning equipment onto the cloth he’d unwrapped them from and stands. 

He isn’t a tall man but Arcade is sitting down, which he supposes helps a little. The broad hands on his shoulders are strange. Heavy. He closes his eyes, breathes in and lets the man lean on him, just for a moment. He wants to reach out and touch him but has this feeling that if he does Lawrence’ll just back off and not say another word. Won’t touch him again.

It’s been so damn long since anyone touched him, friend or no. 

“Why the helll’d you have to walk into my shithole of a town?”He sounds almost pained so Arcade does open his eyes, curling his fingers against his palms so he doesn’t reach out and touch him, doesn’t slide his palms against his hips. 

The warmth of a palm on the back of his neck startles him; Lawrence isn’t one for soft touches and empty platitudes so Arcade tells him the truth. “I wasn’t even looking for you.”  
Laughing again, the darker man leans forward and down a little, stubble scraping across the line of his forehead. Crowding into them, Courier presses her fuzzy head right under Arcade’s palm and it almost hurts to think how much Lawrence trusts him, how much the scarring around her throat shows that Courier’s been mishandled enough for the both of them. Gathering her up into his arms, Arcade presses his face against the soft, slightly sandy fur between her ears and says nothing, not a single word when Agnitio settles in on his shoulder and beats at the back of Lawrence’s head with the feathery elbow of a wing.

Friendship, then. Something more if they survive. It’s more promise than he’s had in a long time. 

\---

It’s a suicide run in more ways than one. Cassidy says she’ll pick people off from a distance, her Daemon large and noticeable and Boone says the same but because he’s happier as a sniper than anything else. Victoria wants in on the charge and Lawrence doesn’t like that, gets half of something about women and front lines out before he’s sporting a punch to the gut and a new, wheezing appreciation of pneumatic gloves.

Luring Benny out is going to be impossible. He’s too well defended, too entrenched. They’ll lose people going in, they all know that but where the Followers previously stood idle there’s an Enclave boot on his heart, shoving him forward and pushing him down and he wishes he’d had the courage to say something, anything because he knows now that Lawrence wouldn’t care, nobody would as long as it got the job done. Another piece of knowledge he holds close to his chest and he’ll get them all killed with the secrets he keeps and he supposes that’s fine, too. That’s something he’s going to have to shoulder on his own. He can do that, his shoulders are broad enough. Courier presses her nose against his hand before she’s off, bigger and more terrifying than before. 

“Stay aloft,” he mutters to Agnitio, not concerned about her hearing. She always hears him, no matter the distance. Winging her way overhead, she gives them seconds warning before the first volley of bullets and they hang back, itching with it, the feel of the battle whizzing by like so many cazadors under their skin.

“No, we need to wait-” Courier’s about to leap straight in but Lawrence holds her in check, more focused on his revenge than ever and if they lose him, they lose this. He’ll be the one to get there, the one to end things one way or another and if they fail, if they don’t stop Benny and don’t take back the Strip, at least they’ll be able to say they tried.

Or other people will be able to say they tried. They’ll all be dead. A sobering thought, but a useless one nonetheless. Their job is to sneak in while the robots are otherwise distracted and they wait for a long, heavy moment before they make their move, running across the edges of the open expanse between the Strip and Freeside, skirting around fallen buildings to get to a part of the fence that’s usually heavily guarded.

It’s still guarded. A shot to the wheel of the robot will bring it down but the second it’s down its fellows will know and swarm. They’re as good as trapped, Courier snarling and Victoria’s Daemon clattering its claws together, Agnitio keeping an eye on everything from above. 

A whirring clank sounds from behind them and before they can turn Rex springs past them, bull insignia scratching away with every strike of a bullet against his chassis. He takes a running leap at the screen of the robot blocking their path and dies for it, the missile ripping half his body away, the blast taking out the robot along with it. They don’t have time to waste, leaping over Rex’s body on the way through and Lawrence shouts to them, rifle drawn and good eye looking down the sight. 

“Don’t stop running!”

The first volley of bullets they expect. There’s enough structure between them and where they need to be that they’re protected, bullets and the remnants of concrete smashed by missiles sailing past them. They’re bleeding but they’re moving and the second volley is just as expected as the first. They can’t afford to get pinned down, Victoria’s Daemon skittering away and jamming its claws into the wheel strut of one of the robots, sending it crashing into another. Courier gets the same idea, bodychecking the second bot and leaping forward onto the third and the bullets that catch her in the stomach set Lawrence to staggering, wheezing with the effort it takes to breathe.

“You can’t stop here-” He can only imagine what its like to have your soul bleeding out, dying without you and he’s seen it once, seen the aftermath, the woman left behind after the Daemon wasted away. He wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy, let alone someone he found that he likes despite himself and Courier just shifts again; a massive yao-guai, two shoulders tall, the extra strength giving something to Lawrence that lets him stagger forward on bandy legs and buckling knees, one foot at a time.

The inside of the building is almost terrifyingly quiet by comparison. Victoria shudders the moment they’re inside, jams her gauntlet into the door and pulls her hand from it, leaving it there. It’s locked, as much as they can lock it and the problem is now they’re locked in, too. The elevator in front of them is unguarded but they don’t kid themselves, even as Lawrence slides down next to one of the poker machines and thunks his head back against aged wood and metal. Courier’s bleeding, sluggish and slow as she whines, Agnitio sliding in the broken windows overhead like a thief in the night, landing on top of one of the machines and rambling at them, jumbling her words up in her concern.

“Guards upstairs, but nothing here. He thinks he’s invincible.”

“Probably doesn’t realise anything’s wrong.” Biting her lip and rubbing a hand through her hair, tugging at the long end of her ponytail, Victoria looks back at the door. “I can stay down here. Make sure nobody gets in.”

“No, that’s-”

Suicide, and none of them ever planned on getting out, did they? Courier slides back into her favourite form and crawls into Lawrence’s arms, the proximity seeming to help with the pain. The man closes his eyes and breathes out, long and slow.

“Need to keep moving.” Grinding it out between his teeth, Lawrence stands with assistance and tries to walk the pain off. It doesn’t work, but he straightens his shoulders and makes for the elevator anyway.

Victoria smiles at them as the doors close. It’s a terrible thing, full of fear and benevolence and the stark knowledge that they’re not going to come out of this alive. Lawrence holds Courier close to his chest, rubbing his hands through her fur and it’s awkward and looks uncomfortable but she whispers something in his ear. Agnitio leans into Arcade’s neck and fluffs her feathers to make him laugh. The laughter’s contagious and they’re howling with it by the time the doors open, the robot standing (wheeling?) in front of it taken off guard by the ding and the way Courier grows, storming out like she’s escaping the gates of hell.

Benny startles out of his chair. His suit crumples at the elbows when he shoves himself up, the chequered fabric bunching and making him look ill-put-together, like his pieces don’t quite fit. One of the robots makes it halfway up the stairs before Lawrence kicks it down and Arcade takes out another, a fourth careening into and then out of a window when he shoots out the screen, blasting through wiring.

It’s anticlimactic, really. Benny barely has time to get up before Lawrence is stalking down the stairs, Courier leaking dust and something close to blood in his wake. Drawing in a shaky breath, Benny combs his hair with a hand and smiles. His Daemon, a deep purple gekko with a square mark on its forehead slinks up beside him and hisses at them, more than prepared to strike.

“Sweetheart, I was wonderin’ when you’d make an appearance. I should never have figured you for de-”

He stops. Stares, something in the shorter, darker man’s face stopping him cold. Swallowing, Benny takes one step back, then another and the wind whips past the window behind him. His Daemon feints left and then jumps, Benny’s gun firing as Courier leaps forward to meet the lizard and rips its throat out with a strong, bonecrunching bite.

Agnitio takes wing just as Lawrence staggers, gutshot and stepping back, saved from landing on his ass by Arcade’s arm. Sinking to the ground, they watch as Benny shouts, his Daemon going limp and starting to crumble as he takes three large steps back and misses the ledge of the broken window. 

He screams the whole way down, Lawrence laughing, pained and stunned and tired all at once. He’s shaking, going into shock and there’s nothing Arcade can do about it, no book-learned knowledge, no magic spell, no miracle he can pull out of his ass to stop the man from dying, to stop himself from being the last one standing. 

Courier crawls back to them, her fur matted with blood and dust, her eyes narrowed. She doesn’t shift again, maybe she can’t, maybe they have closure now but he’s dying and that doesn’t matter anymore. 

“‘m sorry-” He starts and Arcade snarls at him, shuts him up with a gesture and doesn’t move when Agnitio flaps back in and over to them, landing on the railing before hopping onto his shoulder. 

“The robots stopped. The King’s people are swarming in, I think they’re-”

“Oh, gosh. You’ve done a real neat job of this!”

The screen above them flares to life, a guileless robotic face splashed in green across the glass. Lawrence doesn’t bother looking up but Arcade does, tense and tired and alone. Alone even now, with the man in his arms dying. He found himself wondering, idly, how a computer program could look so shocked. 

“It’s a good thing Benny’s dead, he wasn’t a real nice guy. You alright down there buddy?”

“And you are?” Surprised by the tone of his own voice, Arcade pushes his glasses up his nose and lets Lawrence cling to his other arm, lets their fingers slide together. He sounds tired, Worn out. He doesn’t feel it, doesn’t feel anything but hollow. 

“Yes Man! I was created to agree with anything but sometimes I agree and don’t agree and wow, did you want to put your friend in the tank? Fix him up?”

What?

“What?”

“Old Mr. House has a tank in the wall! He was alive got a super long time in there, way longer than he should be. I don’t know if it can fix a gutshot but you should let it try!”

Moving Lawrence is a chore. He’s a dead weight in pain and there’s always the chance that he’ll stop breathing but Courier does her part, stronger than she looks. Maybe he’s fighting for life, maybe she’s taking what he has left and Arcade wonders if she’ll live on when Lawrence dies. Their relationship is strange, at the very least. 

The catwalk is far too long. Lawrence stops breathing just before they slide him into the tank, the thing empty and clean and far too mechanical for his liking but the second he’s down and they have the mask on there’s a massive electric shock, Lawrence’s body jolting with the force of it. Arcade staggers back, letting the body go and giving him room.

A steady, almost too shrill beeping fills the air. Beep. Beat. Beep. Beat. Sliding shut on its own, the tank shifts upright against the wall and starts to fill, a fluid foreign and far too green and blue but Lawrence is breathing and Courier is-

Gone.

No.

“What did you want to do, sir? Did you want to take control? I’m sure that’d be a great idea!”

Shoulders tense, Arcade slides a hand against the glass in front of him, the steady beeping settling heavy at the back of his mind, his Daemon fluttering against his shoulder as he turns and starts to walk back, shoes scuffing against the metal of the catwalk. 

“Sure.”

What else did they have to lose?

\---

He breathes in. Three years, two weeks, four days. He can’t count the hours if you ask him but nobody does. Veronica’s body was pulled from the mess downstairs so long ago it feels like a dream but she was the only real casualty. The only named casualty. He knows her, knows each one of them and the robots are decommissioned, repurposed and restructured. He can do that now. Can do a lot now.

He cuts his own hair, wears the same ratty, worn coat and sometimes he closes his eyes and pretends he can feel a hand at the back of his neck. It’s a sensation he wishes he knew the name for; all his book learning comes to naught in the face of something awful, terrible and human.

Agnitio alights on his shoulder as he turns from the window he never bothered to replace. Courier thumps her tail against the doorframe, grinning wide and sharp at him from the dark edges of the room.

“You’re late.” She says. “We’re waiting.”

The liquid’s drained by the time he makes it down the hallway.


End file.
